Andrew Rea

Whir of the Underground

There is that Whir

of steely momentum

fit perfectly between me and the Rounded

Aerodynamics of the train car

That subzero nitrogenic hipitched

Hum pushing me from stop

to stop a spitball in a straw

and the Hum is the lungs

When the antiseptic unsexed voice

of I imagine Lady Macbeth

crackles and hisses that this train is for

Cockfosters I still laugh because

I am new to town

:London the pressure point

of logjam logarithms and freetrade draped in ermine

and acetate straddling the Millennium

Bridge and ever facing Eastward

I am in the tubes below

humming along with a train

speeding through the dried fallopians

that birthed Digital Brick Dynasties

and that maybe

Iíll call home (I havenít

decided yet) in the air

conditioned lunging Hush of the train

I am remembering reading

about the refugees stuck in the tubes

Sixty Years before

Distorted and dispirited sucked out

like the marrow from bone

They were underground shellfish drowned

in musty subterranea and waiting

for their sky to burst

from the heat and ashes

to spiral like maggots to the ground

(and they were in for the long

haul months of waiting on

cots and threadbare army

blankets smelling of bacon and hay

and Winston Churchill)

They left later to meet

an unburned sky and maggot free streets

scarred by craters and contusions

And their ears hurt for days

missing weeks of the unbroken

Whir of the underground

Like the worldending whir of the subway train

I am fit snug between monolithic silences

beginning to close my eyes

doze under the doorway beeps and Eunuch

Shakespeare voices and above

the concertina wire strung in rings

along the fences that retreat into the dusk

it is a long ride and I have

the time to sleep

In the fluorescent station there

are the tracks and the clouded

skylights above there are no people

sleeping under hammy blankets

in the stations of Mornington Crescent

or Parsonís Green I remind myself

under stiff beams

of Moonlight I hear the train

slide into the tunnel and I hear

the silence displaced

Beneath the tracks I see mice

scurry to their nests for the night

because they still live in the stations

as if they donít know

they donít need to anymore:

afraid to leave the motherly Whir

that lulls them to sleep come bedtime